FIFA 11 - quick play preview

It's the debate that won't seem to go away. FIFA or Pro Evo? EA or Konami? Every year the rivalry intensifies and even here at Pocket-lint Towers we have argued long into the night as to what is the king of the footie sim?

And, as the 2011 versions of both titles were on show over at Gamescom, we thought it was only right to take them both for a spin and see how they faired. Now let's have a look at EA's effort

FIFA 11 delivers a true football experience with authentic club and leagues licenses and gameplay refinements and innovations that combine to create the complete football simulation.

The storyline

This is the 18th title of EA's franchise, dating all the way back from 1993 (the original had David Platt on the cover). It's the most detailed football sim in the market and has built up a bit of a purists fanbase in the last few year - stealing a few over from its main rival Konami. The new game updates all the regular features as well as adding a play as the goalkeeper mode.

Video

Our first impressions

Okay, first up a confession.

This quick-play is being written by a self confessed PES addict, who has been outspoken in the past regarding EA's FIFA franchise.

But, the opinions expressed here are honest, and without bias and any criticism is warranted.

The thing is, you won't find much criticism here - the gameplay impressed us greatly (even if we were unable to switch to the classic PES-style control set up).

FIFA has definitely lost its, shall we say, ridiculous nature, whereby you can score spectacular overhead kicks and goals from the halfway line, and the gameplay is vastly improved because of this.

We've played plenty of FIFA 10 and found it to be a massive improvement on past efforts and FIFA 11 takes this one step further. It felt fluid, it felt slick and it felt, well it felt a bit like PES.

The passing, like we found with PES 2011, felt greatly improved - possibly due to the new pro-passing feature.

The match we were involved in went to penalties (where we faced a German, so no chance of winning) but neither we, nor our opponent could get the hang of the new penalty set up. The controls felt far too sensitive and most penalties flew high over the bar.

The strong point of FIFA has always been its attention to detail and FIFA 11 does the franchise proud. It looks simply stunning and the individual specifics of each player is incredible.

It's too early to properly compare FIFA 11 and PES 11, but judging by this early showing, EA's effort has gone a long way to convincing a PES addict that it is a very strong title.

Please note

Gamescom is a fantastic chance to see the latest games due out over the coming year, letting us get a glimpse into what are going to be the big titles and the ones to avoid like the plague.

The big problem however, is that for most of the titles that glimpse is, well, just that. At the show you'll get to play a level here or a multiplayer map there.

So with that in mind we present you with our Quick Play.

What we've done is broken down the key facts you need to know and then given you our first impressions based on around 15 minutes of gaming. For us that 15 minutes isn't enough to do a First Look review. How can you rate a game that offers over 30 hours of gaming on just 15 minutes of play? However, it should hopefully give you an idea, a feeling, a notion, of what to expect come launch day.